Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category

If you will be attending the 2015 MLA Convention in Vancouver (8-11 January), you may be interested in the following sessions on British literature of the long 19th century. The complete convention program is available and searchable on the MLA website. If we’ve left anything out, feel free to let us know.

Devouring: Food, Drink and the Written Word, 1800-1945

Saturday 8th March 2014, University of Warwick

Keynote speakers:

Professor Nicola Humble (University of Roehampton)

DrMargaret Beetham (University of Salford)

CALL FOR PAPERS

This one day interdisciplinary conference will explore the place of food, drink and acts of consumption within the textual culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The years 1800-1945 are marked by food adulteration scandals, the growth of the temperance movement, and significant reforms in the regulation and legislation of food standards, as well as the influence of the colonies on British cuisine and a relationship with food and drink made increasingly complex by wartime paucity and rationing. These changes are both precipitated and responded to in a vast array of textual forms, including periodicals, the press, recipe books, household management manuals, propaganda, literature and poetry. This conference will therefore engage with the intersections of food/drink cultures and the written word.

We are seeking papers which explore how food and drink were written, experienced and imagined during the period: as a commodity, a luxury item, a source of poison or nutrition, in its abundance or in short supply. We hope to attract all researchers who have an interest in the culinary cultures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including those working in the histories of medicine, art and food, as well as anthropologists, historians of the nineteenth century and war years, and those working in literary studies. By bringing together scholars from many disciplines, we hope to provide a space in which to open up dialogue about nineteenth and early twentieth century narratives of eating, drinking, consuming, and their worth, and to provide a timely examination of our relationship with food and drink at a moment when economic and ecological pressures herald a re-appropriation of the values of wartime thrift and Victorian domestic economy.

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:

Representations of food and drink in specific texts and their wider implications.

Cultures of eating, drinking and cooking.

Social histories of food and drink.

The uses of food and drink in the articulation (or challenging) of community, nation or empire.

Food or drink as metaphor/trope/structural device.

The relationship(s) between reading and eating or drinking.

The role of food and drink in cultural constructions of domestic space.

How did the rapid period of industrialisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries help to shape societies and lifestyles in the West? What types of social changes, movements and developments characterise this time period? This interdisciplinary postgraduate conference, in affiliation with the Centre for the Study of Cultural Modernity and hosted by the College of Arts and Law, seeks to explore the various ways in which this century was one of ‘motion’, in every sense of the word. The conference title seeks to encapsulate both the uncertainty and upheaval of this period as well as the physical and cultural movements that occurred at this time. We invite papers addressing these themes from postgraduate researchers and early-career academics working on this period from a variety of backgrounds.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

Cultural or social movements

political movements

the Women’s Movement

arts movements (musical, artistic, literary)

religious and philosophical

popular cultural trends (food, fashion, advertising)

Physical movements

mass movement of people (mobilisation of soldiers, migration from towns to cities)

These headings are suggestions only; we welcome proposals exploring crossovers between these topics, or addressing them from interdisciplinary perspectives. Abstracts of 250-300 words for 20 minute papers along with a short biographical note of no more than 50 words should be sent to pgculturalmodernity@contacts.bham.ac.uk by the 17th May 2013. We welcome any questions that you may have; please do not hesitate to contact us at the above address.

For more information about the Centre for the Study of Cultural Modernity please visit their website:

VISAWUS 2013 CONFERENCE INFORMATION

VISAWUS, the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States, announces its 18th annual conference:

“Victorian Modernities” November 14-16, 2013

Courtyard by Marriott, Portland City Center, Portland, Oregon USA

“Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.” – Oscar Wilde

VISAWUS 2013 explores the Victorians’ enthusiasm and apprehension regarding modern progress and innovation.We encourage papers across all disciplines, including (but not restricted to) art history, literature, gender, history of science, history, material culture, political science, performance, life writings, journalism, photography, popular culture, and economics.

Keynote Speaker: Joseph Bristow (English, UCLA), author and editor of numerous works on Victorian and modern literature and theories and histories of sexuality, including Effeminate England: Homoerotic Writing after 1885 (1995), Sexuality (1997), The Fin-de-Siècle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s (2005), and Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend (2009), is currently working on a project on “The Sex of Victorian Poetry” and editing the Journal of Victorian Culture and the Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture series.

The Byron Society of America solicits paper proposals featuring new research and fresh methodologies applied to any aspect of Byron’s life or works for the 129th MLA Annual Convention (Chicago, 9-12 January 2014). Paper proposals should demonstrate a desire to expand the field of Byron studies by placing the poet and his works in conversation with understudied aspects of Romanticism and/or innovative approaches. Topics may include but are not limited to: material culture studies, object -oriented criticism, cosmopolitanism, nationalism, theories of empire, “spatial turn,” digital humanities, and/or the history of the book.

Early booking is advised since there are limited numbers of places for some events and some types of accommodation.

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BYRON: the poetry of politics and the politics of poetry

This conference will examine Byron’s engagement with politics in the widest sense: as a poet, as a member of the House of Lords, as a commentator on his time, and latterly as a would-be revolutionary.

The conference will be held at King’s College London’s Strand Campus in the heart of London. Accommodation will be available in King’s College London’s Stamford Street Apartments (a limited number of single ensuite rooms 10 minutes’ walk from the conference venue, at a cost of £41.25 per person per night – early booking is advised) and at the Strand Palace Hotel (five minutes’ walk from the venue – bookings to be made directly with the Hotel). Conference discount available when booking for the conference, see booking page.

A limited number of student bursaries will be available for those presenting a paper.

• a special exhibition ‘Byron and politics’: manuscripts, printed books and memorabilia from the John Murray Archive and the Foyle Special Collections Library, King’s College London, curated by David McClay (National Library of Scotland), Stephanie Breen and Katie Sambrook (King’s College London)

• ‘Byron, Elgin and the Marbles’: readings and reception hosted by the British Museum (including a private viewing of the Parthenon Sculptures)

We invite papers on any aspect of the theme, which refers to Lewis Carroll’s 1871 sequel to Alice in Wonderland, but invites much wider consideration. The story begins on November 4, the day before Guy Fawkes Night, and is also associated with issues of time and space, the game of chess, fairy tale and fantasy, neologism, history, curiosity, epistemology, dress and wigs, and of course, mirrors.

A Conference in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Victorian Poetry

19-20 April 2013 at West Virginia University

Please send 300-500 word proposals for papers and a 1-page c.v. via email to John.Lamb@mail.wvu.edu by 15 December 2012.

Papers on any aspect of Victorian Poetry and Poetics are invited, especially those devoted to: the reconsideration of poetic forms and formal innovations; fashions, trend, and modes in poetry; the publication and commerce of poetry; poetry book history; and Victorian prosody and stanzaic forms. Papers devoted to the “fashions” of scholarship on Victorian poetry for the last fifty years are also invited.

We are soliciting papers from Hardy scholars around the world for the Twentieth International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival which will take place in Dorchester, UK from 18-26th August, 2012. Proposals should take the form of an abstract not exceeding 250 words max for papers of 20 minutes duration. These will be delivered in chaired parallel sessions throughout the week as part of the academic program of lectures, seminars, talks and the postgraduate symposium. Proposals may address any aspect of Hardy’s life, work and thought but we are particularly keen to encourage papers focusing on the following areas:

Hardy and Genre (particularly the short story).

Hardy and the Visual and/or Plastic Arts.

Hardy and Intertextuality.

Hardy and Cultural Heritage.

Wessex and the wider world.

Hardy and international politics.

International responses to the work of Thomas Hardy

Hardy’s influence on poets, writers and musicians (including popular musicians) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Proposals should be addressed to:

‘Call for Papers’ – ( The Thomas Hardy Society) Dr. Jane Thomas, Department of English University of Hull, East Yorkshire HU6 7RX